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Prettiest websites

The reds.com site, of all things, kind of got my mind wandering on this. I have kind of a fascination for pretty or particularly well-designed websites, probably because i have no talent for art or computer so it boggles my mind that people can do both of those things well. And I have a friend who has the most beautiful website that he just redesigned:

I can't imagine how he does this. Scroll over the left side and look what happens to your link options. His old sites were beautiful too, and you can access them by clicking on the window with the "A" on it. The one that says "time-of-day sensitive" really does change looks depending on what time of day you visit. Check out the way the mouse reflects in the mirror, the way things move when you click on links. There is so much going on here and it's just so well-done, I've looked at it for hours before. In his case, he's not even a web designer. He's an artist who just wanted to design his own site and taught himself how (he uses flash, I think, though heck if I know what that means), and he's never done any other websites.

Any web designers here? Did you teach yourself how, and were you artistically- or technically-inclined or both? Any beautiful or fun sites people can recommend?

Re: Prettiest websites

Vaticanplum,

That site is awesome. Wonderful art and very slick design.

Thanks for sharing the link.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
~ Mark Twain

Re: Prettiest websites

It is all done in flash. If you break it down on a techical level I'd imagine the logic behind it isn't that terribly complicated. The real beauty is in the creativity of the design and the artwork. Really super impressive.

Get your nunchucks and the keys to your dad's car. I know where we can get a gun

Re: Prettiest websites

Originally Posted by pedro

It is all done in flash. If you break it down on a techical level I'd imagine the logic behind it isn't that terribly complicated. The real beauty is in the creativity of the design and the artwork. Really super impressive.

But for the technically uninclined, what does that mean? Is "flash" a language or a program? How do you tell it what to do? How do you make it creative? Some of this I could ask my friend I suppose.

I would love to see other examples of different programming of sites, if you guys know of them. I just know so little about this stuff.

A Flash animation or Flash cartoon is an animated film which is distributed in the .swf file format of Adobe Flash animation software. It can be created in Flash or with some other programs which are able to write .swf files. The term Flash animation not only refers to the file format but to a certain kind of movement and a visual style which, due to the restrictions and abilities of Flash, seems to be featured in more than half of all available Flash films.

Partly because of the limitations of the software and partly to produce small file sizes for web distribution a big part of the animation created in Flash is done in the fashion known as limited animation, or even in an cutout animation style. Some typical features of Flash animation could be: jerky natural movements (walks, gesture), lip movement without interpolation, abrupt changes from front to profile view or even no head turns at all. Although Flash is able to integrate video and photo, most Flash films use just the vector drawing tools of Flash which results in a somewhat "clean" and graphical appearance.

Flash animations are typically distributed via the World Wide Web, in which case it is often called an Internet cartoon, online cartoon, or webtoon. Web flash animations may be interactive and are often created in a series. A Flash animation is distinguished from a Webcomic, which is a comic strip distributed via the Web, rather than an animated cartoon.
Simple animation in Flash 6.0; a square moving across the screen in a motion tween, one of the basic functions of Flash.
Enlarge
Simple animation in Flash 6.0; a square moving across the screen in a motion tween, one of the basic functions of Flash.

History

The first prominent use of this format was by Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi as a mission to bring cartoons to the world wide web. He had brought his creations "George Liquor" (in which was the banned character from Ren & Stimpy) with his dim-witted nephew "Jimmy the Hapless Idiot Boy" on their own internet program. Later John did more experiments with flash animation including a deal with Icebox.com, commercials and a music video. After that, web cartoons started popping up everywhere.

Some professional animated television series are also produced using Adobe Flash because of the (comparatively) low cost of production, such as the Emmy Award-winning Off-Mikes, produced by ESPN and Animax Entertainment and Gotham Girls, produced by Warner Brothers. The Critic was the first animated television series to use Flash. After being canceled from both ABC & Fox, Atom Films created net-only episodes in 2000-2001. Some existing television cartoons such as Home Movies and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law (both on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim) have switched to Flash from other animation technology, as well as the lesser-known Aaagh! It's the Mr. Hell Show & Queer Duck from Showtime, and Shorties Watching Shorties on Comedy Central. The BBC Three show Monkey Dust and Cartoon Network's Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends are also created using Flash.

In recent years animation film festivals have noticed the boom of Flash animation and quickly arranged separate categories in competition for "web cartoons" or "internet cartoons". Even some purely web-based Flash competitions have been established. In the long run, however, it is likely that only the category "made for internet" will survive, because traditionally competitions at animation film festivals are set up in categories mostly defined by film length and distribution channel, not by the animation techniques or the software used in making a film.

Flash animation in professional studios

Although Flash animation creation is generally much easier and less expensive than traditional animation techniques, the amount of time, money, and skills needed depends on the chosen content and style. Distribution via the Internet is very easy and cheap compared to television broadcasting, and websites such as Newgrounds and UGOplayer host Flash animations for free. Many Flash animations are created by individual or amateur artists, though it does require enough technical expertise to use Adobe Flash. Some web Flash animations become popular enough to air on broadcast television, on channels such as MTV and G4TV.

In recent years more and more studios doing animation for TV use Flash, especially since some recent drawing styles are easier to do in Flash than with other techniques. TV series also benefit from Flash's ability to organise a large number of assets, like characters, scenes, movements, and props for later re-use. Because Flash files are a vector file format, they can even be used to transfer animation to 35mm film without any compromise in image quality when bringing the cartoon to the big screen. This opportunity is used by several independent animators world-wide.

Creating Flash animation from other software

Because the Flash file format is published, there are a number of other software packages available that can create output in .swf format. Among these are Animo (Cambridge Animation Systems), Toon Boom Studio, and Anime Studio (was Moho from Lost Marble, now eFrontier). These frontends often provide additional support for creating cartoons, especially with tools more familiar to traditionally trained animators, as well as additional rigging for characters which makes it much easier to animate it. There are even programs available which translate 3D information into 2D vector information.

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and before that FutureSplash), or simply Flash, refers to both the Adobe Flash Player and to a multimedia authoring program used to create content for the Adobe Engagement Platform (such as web applications, games and movies). The Flash Player, developed and distributed by Adobe Systems (which bought Macromedia in 2005), is a client application available in most dominant web browsers. It features support for vector and raster graphics, a scripting language called ActionScript and bi-directional streaming of audio and video.

Strictly speaking, Adobe Flash is an integrated development environment (IDE) while Flash Player is a virtual machine used to run, or parse, the Flash files, but in contemporary colloquial terms "Flash" can refer to the authoring environment, the player or the application files.

Since its introduction in 1996, Flash technology has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages; several software products, systems, and devices are able to create or display Flash. Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, various web-page components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich Internet applications.

The Flash files, traditionally called "Flash movies", have a .swf file extension and may be an object of a web page, strictly "played" in a standalone Flash Player, or incorporated into a Projector, a self-executing Flash movie.

Get your nunchucks and the keys to your dad's car. I know where we can get a gun

Re: Prettiest websites

But for the technically uninclined, what does that mean? Is "flash" a language or a program? How do you tell it what to do? How do you make it creative? Some of this I could ask my friend I suppose.

I would love to see other examples of different programming of sites, if you guys know of them. I just know so little about this stuff.

Flash is a vector based rendering program that can manage anything from enterprise systems to websites. It uses a scripting language called 'actionscript" that is a robust backend tool that is the true star of the application. It was developed IIRC by a company in San Diego and bought out by Macromedia around 2000 and now belongs to Adobe.

To manage a movie in flash you need content, which you produce and import to the program and then assemble it in there, laying it on a time line that defines the contents existence on the screen. It doesn't have to be a linear piece it can call other movies or media and display that within the program or elsewhere on your screen.

Myspace is designed in Flash, all youtubes are flash movies. Flash is everywhere.

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